CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

if you return the content of the template, it displays it with the theme, if you echo it it doesn't.

Tip: you can test if it's an ajax call (like for a tab) with HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH. With the following code, you can have the same template displayed as a normal page (with the full layout) or without any chrome (for ajax). It makes it way easier to debug!

Tip 2: if your template is "simply" about displaying a few things you can fetch with the api without any calculation, you can put in your extension
templates/CRM/Contact/Page/Inline/Mycoolsummarytab.tpl
 (that contains the {crmAPI you need}

and you got it on http://example.org/civicrm/inline/contact/mycoolsummarytab?contact_id=42
(no need to alter the menu or add an xml something, just works)
http://issues.civicrm.org/jira/browse/CRM-9792


// from CRM/Utils/REST.php
    if  ( ! array_key_exists ( 'HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH', $_SERVER ) ||
      $_SERVER['HTTP_X_REQUESTED_WITH'] != "XMLHttpRequest"  )  {

        $smarty->assign( 'tplFile', $tpl );
        $config = CRM_Core_Config::singleton();
        $content = $smarty->fetch( 'CRM/common/'. strtolower($config->userFramework) .'.tpl' );

        if ($region = CRM_Core_Region::instance('html-header', FALSE)) {
          CRM_Utils_System::addHTMLHead($region->render(''));
        }
        CRM_Utils_System::appendTPLFile( $tpl, $content );

        return CRM_Utils_System::theme( 'page', $content, true);

      } else {
        $content = "<!-- .tpl file embeded: $tpl -->\n";
        CRM_Utils_System::appendTPLFile( $tpl, $content );
        echo $content . $smarty->fetch ($tpl);
        CRM_Utils_System::civiExit( );
    }
  }